Defoliation: Hi-Yield Technique?

[señorsloth]

ive been testing defoliation for the past 6 weeks, or more accurately, ive been testing NOT defoliating, because i believe in defoliating...you can check out the last few pages of my thread for more details and side by sides pics...

anyways for the first 3 weeks i was confident defoliation doesn't hurt yields and lets you pack growth in tighter than normal...at about week 3 though i started to notice that the foliated side looked way fatter than previous harvests, that were grown EXACTLY the same except defoliated...over the next two weeks the side with all it's leaves had tops that were dwarfing the last run...during those 2 weeks i was COMPLETELY CONVINCED, defoliating DOESN'T work, you lose WAY too much yield, because after all, at this pace, i would be getting like 33% more this run than last...

however...i was proven wrong again, because im now 10 or 11 days from harvest, and it's plain to see...YES THE TOPS ARE BIGGER, but...thats mostly because the bottom half is much smaller and fluffier than last round...exactly as ive always said before i guess...the plant diverts growth to the tops getting the most light...leaving poorly lit growth tips small, under developed and fluffy...

i cant stand fluffy buds, but based on my extensive experience with this mom, they aren't going to get plump enough before the next 10 days is up...they will still be fluffy at harvest, meaning i have about 5% more yeild per plant, but probably 1/3 of my crop will be fluffy shit buds, last round i didn't have any fluff buds at all, because the defoliation allowed light to penetrate the entire budding zone, so the plant, rather than focusing all it's energy on the very tops, seem to spread the growth more evenly throughout the budding zone, the tops are a little smaller, but the lower buds are bigger and firmer...yield should be similar between defoliated and foliated, as i've always said in the past, but defoliated buds are more consistently plump and ripe, from the top of the plant to the bottom... whereas the leafy ones have huge heads and lots of fluff that is hard to get rid of afterwards...

this is not the case if your plants aren't spaced super close together, and i think that's where the confusion comes in, plants with more elbow room don't really need defoliation to ensure the bottom buds are as ripe and plump as the top ones, but if that's how you are growing you probably aren't reaching your grows potential yield...if you pack them in so tight that defoliation is NECESSARY to keep the bottoms from getting fluffy you will get a lot bigger yields...

of course i still have 11 days to go on this round before i know for absolutely sure...i feel confident that my predictions are right because i have grown literally hundreds of clones of this mother plant, exactly the same size and spacing every time, when your plants only yield 5 grams a piece, it's REALLY easy to predict final yield less than weeks from harvest...at this size, a 4 gram plant looks substantially smaller than a 5 gram plant...these kind of predictions couldn't be made as accurately when trying to judge the yield of a 50 or 100 gram plant...just a lot higher margin of error is all...

of course should my predictions be proven wrong by the scale come harvest im not to big to admit i was wrong, and you can bet this will be the first place i go to correct myself...but really...i know my lady, and the chances of that happening are very small...nevertheless i did this experiment for myself AND the community, im not going to misslead the entire community to save face...thats the great thing about science, eh, even if your prediction is tested to be wrong, you still come out with solid facts...you may be wrong but at least the speculation is over...

 

[DrFever]

Senor what kind of power are you using for your grow as you mentioned in your thread the plants you didn't touch appeared to be changing color quicky rippening , but you also mentioned lower buds were fluffy wold not running 1000 watts or even 600 solve the lower bud larf Being you would have penetration like a MOFO

Medicalm ??? can you post some pictures on your girls please thanks

 

[señorsloth]

Senor what kind of power are you using for your grow as you mentioned in your thread the plants you didn't touch appeared to be changing color quickly ripening ,

good point fever, i forgot to mention that, one of the few downsides to defoliation is that it slows ripening...my foliated crop is almost a week ahead of my normal harvest date...it is a nice perk, cause for once i get to let them get a little overripe before harvest, but honestly this damn clone is fast enough lol, i don't really need it to be 20% amber at day 50...

but you also mentioned lower buds were fluffy wold not running 1000 watts or even 600 solve the lower bud larf Being you would have penetration like a MOFO

lol it's not that simple, i can't just throw 1000 watts in a wardrobe, i have a footprint around 4.5 square feet...besides that i'm at 100w per foot already and ten inches above the canopy with my 400w lamp, so i'm already overpowered...and there is just no way i could get 1000 grams in 4.5 square feet (2000g per meter squared i think) so it would be super inefficient...1000w covers 16 square feet perfectly at the recommended 65w per foot, i've seen guys run then in 3 by 3 foot spaces and still cram a gram per watt in, but it would be a thousand degrees if i tried to put something like that in my cab, and anything over 300w is overkill in my space, so 1000 would just be a huge waste of electricity...although you are right...i would get penetration like a "mofo" haha, i can keep dreaming...but the new cab im designing has even less overhead for flowering, because i have 4 feet of headroom now and i'm using less than 3 feet...

trust me i would love to run about 3 thousand watts flowering and aa grand over my mom's, but id need to get approved for a mortgage to pull that much electricity...with my credit i'll probably be renting for the rest of my life, so i'm limited in the amount of electricity i can use and the size of the space as well.

my grow style however would still require defoliation regardless of wattage...because with a 1000w bulb the "optimum budding zone" is way more than twice as deep as my 400...the "optimum budding zone" is a block of space, that starts at the point where raising the buds any closer produces heat damage or bleaching, and goes down to a point that reliably makes firm buds...for me that's about 10 or 12 inches, if i grew my plants past that height, say 24 or 36 inches, i'd still only 10 to 12 inches of buds, but id also have a foot or two of bare stems below that...bare stems are wasted veg time in my eye...and the true grams per watt measurements from overgrow took veg and bloom times into account...

anyways that's why i grow 12 inch plants, so that i get a solid block of buds from 10 inches from the bulb, right down to the dirt...if i did this style with 1000w i would have them spaced similarly tight, as i always advocate for high yields; sog, bush, or scrog... the difference would be that instead of a wall of 12 inch plants id shoot for a wall of 24 to 30 inch plants, with no branches, packed as tightly in as possible...keeping the same density of plants but making the depth of the wall of buds twice as deep would still require defoliation, because a 400w bulb penetrating a 12 inch super dense canopy would be similar to a 1000w bulb penetrating a 30 inch super dense canopy...

the higher the wattage, the bigger the budding zone, and it's not really linear, 1000w penetrate a LOT more efficiently per watt than a 400w will, they have more much more par watts and since they degrade exponentially over a short distance it is very much more efficient to start off as high on that exponential curve as you can...you have no idea, dr. fever, when i look at grows like yours (awesome grow btw)and supermans, how much i wish i could expand...but by the time i get a mortgage on a house pot will be legal and i wouldn't want to grow more than i could smoke anyway...

there are other variables at play too though obviously, defoliation is even better on strains susceptible to mold, cause it brings down the rh a ton...but it's also less useful on more pure sativas, with super thin leaf blades, because light penetrates them more, there are several breeders out there trying to choose thin leafed traits on indica's now because of this, big leaves are truly about shading out other plants and fighting for canopy space, while thin bladed leaves with decent wind flutter so much they barely block light at all...for some of them, defoliation would likely do more harm than good, because leaving them on wont cause more fluff buds due to superior penetration based on leaf shape, so cutting them off would do nothing but needlessly stress the budding plants into ripening slower and losing a bit of overall yeild...on more indica plants it can often be essential...for instance if you have seen pics of the leaves on my next strain, maple leaf indica, there is NO WAY IN HELL i could sog them like i do my c99's and skunks without defoliating the crap out of them. the leafs are the size of dinner plates and the blades are so wide they overlap... but their buds are really leafy so it likely would make less difference...that is probably another variable...ive never tested it but logic would say higher bud to leaf ratio strains would not only require less defoliation because they have less leaves, but defoliating them would likely hurt yeilds MUCH more than it would a very leafy bud strain...because buds don't really participate in photosynthesis like leaves do, so they would have almost nothing left, whereas if you defoliate a budding plant that has super leafy buds, well you cut off all the fan leaves, but it still has tons and tons of bud leaves to carry on photosynthesis...

 

[Bud buster]

Double post

 

[Bud buster]

good point fever, i forgot to mention that, one of the few downsides to defoliation is that it slows ripening...my foliated crop is almost a week ahead of my normal harvest date...it is a nice perk, cause for once i get to let them get a little overripe before harvest, but honestly this damn clone is fast enough lol, i don't really need it to be 20% amber at day 50...

Didn't you run a HPS last time and now running a MH. The MH has more UV a more balanced spectrum and new that may be it.

I have 100 watts of blue cfls opposite a 400 watt HPS and the leaves will turn to the cfls even if they are closer to the HPS both horizontal.


I don't think defoliation slows them down much it just transfers hormones to the inner branches causing them to explode in three days I have the same leaf mass
before after 70 hours later

 

[TGT]

I have learned one thing from personal experience and Bubba Kush does not yield better with the defoliation technique. I should have documented it but there does not seem to be enough hours in the day lately. I had two Bubba's from clone and I know the strain well. I had one with defoliation and the other without - and the other without produced almost a third more with them being exactly the same age and size. So I know, at least for Bubba it doesn't do well, not saying other strains won't react differently. Just my observation. Next I'll try it on my Lime Skunk since it is a 50/50 idica/sativa.

TGT

 

[señorsloth]

Didn't you run a HPS last time and now running a MH. The MH has more UV a more balanced spectrum and new that may be it.

i have read that the increased uv will help sativa's ripen, and i guess c99 is a sativa of course, but i think it's a lot more domesticated than most sativa's...i could be wrong, but it seems to me to have a lot more "bag appeal" than most sativa's...not to mention a 7-8 week ripening period...although i guess on the other hand this plant has been evolving for millions of years, a couple dozen years of breeding by humans couldn't touch most of whats genetically encoded in a plant to survive...the uv thing is theorized to be caused because there is much more uv on the equator than there is in other parts of the world, and most of the best sativa's grow in equatorial regions...where they would have evolved with larger amounts of uv...also i don't think the "newness" of the bulb is a variable, because my old bulb was an 8 month old hortilux eye, that still had 3-4 more months of good life before it started to become less bright...were it some crappy philips bulb you would likely be right, they start to drop off after a month or so, and shouldn't be used more than 2-3 months at a time...thats why i buy the nice bulbs, better spectrum, and they last 4-6 times longer so the overall cost is similar to the cheep ones...

but i have other reasons for not giving the credit to my new awesome sunmaster warm deluxe...as much as i love this bulb and have super high hopes for it...i can't really say defoliation doesn't hurt ripening times, because frankly, i know that it does, for the past 2 years it's been a very consistent trait...if i defoliated they always took a week longer...whether it was my old chem ibl or og kush, or any of the others ive grown in the past 2 years...i think it's so consistent, because stress is stress, i figure cutting half the leafs on an indica probably stresses it exactly the same as cutting half the leaves on a sativa...just because they are stressed the same by the act of cutting though doesn't mean they will be affected the same in the long run, because obviously if one plants bud is 90% calyx ten percent leaf, and you cut off all it's fans, well then it doesn't have much left, but if a plants buds are 65% calyxes and 35% leaves and you cut off all the fans, well it has much more bud leaves so overtime it will probably realize better gains from defoliation than one with a very very low percentage of bud leaves to buds...they would theoretically be cut the same amount of times(assuming they have the same amount of fans) and would then be immediately stressed the same...but after the stress passes, that they shared equally, one will still have more leaves and will probably react better than the other over the coming weeks...though the initial shock of having leaves cut off would be experienced similarly regardless of strain...explaining why i always seem to lose exactly a week when i defoliate regardless of strain, but some plants react to defoliation better than others...

I have 100 watts of blue cfls opposite a 400 watt HPS and the leaves will turn to the cfls even if they are closer to the HPS both horizontal.

ya im with you bud buster, not only do my stretching plants look happier(the first 2 weeks are as close to vegging as i get), and frostier already, but the color of the light makes it so much easier to pick out deficiencies and stuff...

they say that the reason they work so well for budding, is that prior to popular belief, red light isn't really used for growth, the red light triggers hormonal changes in the plant, basically it tells the plant fall is coming and helps get it in the mood for budding...whether the plant is in flower or veg is still does most of it's photosynthesis in the blue range...hps aren't great in the blues, enhanced spectrum ones are ok, but they don't come close to even touching a metal halide for blue spectrum, and according to the graphs on my bulbs along with graphs of what plants want, my red enhanced metal halide has almost as much red in the right wavelengths as hps do but again, much much more blue light in the right spectrum. i think if i had put it in a little sooner i probably would have seen yeild gains as well, as many are now reporting...but the next run will probably show that better than this current one, since it's gotten mh it's whole life...and not just the last few weeks, already at 10 days they look so much healthier and more lush that they do under hps...

as always i am excited, but doing my best to stay open minded, should this new bulb not perform as well as my hortilux eye hps, i'll happily change it, but i have done dozens of hours researching it, as i do most things before i'll try them in my grow, and i'm fairly sure i'll get the same results everybody else is who has actually taken the mh plunge, and not just recited the old "hps is for bud mh is for veg" line...out of all the stuff out there about people switching i have yet to find a single grower who went back, or was disappointed...

i guess like in the 70's when indoor growing was brand new, hps were near their technological peak, whereas metal halides were relatively new...at the time hps were superior to mh for budding so it became the norm, but hps hasn't changed much in the past 40 years, while metal halides have been advancing in leaps and bounds...unfortunately people don't like to experiment with things like they did on overgrow...very few people are willing to question the mainstream and risk their vast profits to test something as major as that...if it works, don't fix it, right? people would cite that hps has much more lumens, an average 400w hps puts out like 50,000 lumens compared to 38,000 with metal halide...but lumens are a measure of a certain part of the spectrum, i think its in the yellows, it is a measure of a part of the spectrum that plants CANT see...so in the end, lumens are very relevant to show how well a bulb will light a street or house, it doesn't mean shit when showing how well it will light a plant...Par watts on the other hand are a measure of spectums that plants specifically DO absorb, and it ignores the spectrums plants can't see, like lumens. in the par watts category, metal halides beat high pressure sodium every time...they just put out more energy in the right spectrums than hps do...and apparently they are getting even better...they are available in all spectrums now,(mines like 3000k i think)ceramic metal halides...by comparison hps are pretty much the same bulb that they were 30 years ago...

 

[señorsloth]

I have learned one thing from personal experience and Bubba Kush does not yield better with the defoliation technique. I should have documented it but there does not seem to be enough hours in the day lately. I had two Bubba's from clone and I know the strain well. I had one with defoliation and the other without - and the other without produced almost a third more with them being exactly the same age and size. So I know, at least for Bubba it doesn't do well, not saying other strains won't react differently. Just my observation. Next I'll try it on my Lime Skunk since it is a 50/50 idica/sativa.

i think i saw that...didn't somebody suggest you leave one foliated to see how it did? personally i don't think it raises yeilds on a plant by plant basis, more that, even though you may yield a little less per plant, you can fit a lot more plants in the same area, so your overall yield can rise...like if you pack them in so tight that were you not to defoliate your bottom buds would be pure shit fluff...

although like i said my experiment is still 8-10 days from being over...maybe all those leaves in my crop this round are creating an optical illusion of sorts, hiding the lower buds a lot more...making the yield gain you are seeing less visible in my own crop... personally i don't think it's happening but OMG would it be awesome to see a 30% increase in yield per plant over last round just because i stopped trimming leaves...i would be easily over a gram per watt if that were to happen, and i would very happily campaign against defoliation forever...

unfortunately im fairly sure it's not as simple as that...as with most techniques it must work better with some strains than others, there is also no defined parameters to do it...for instance i don't defoliate at all until stretch is over, then i gradually try to take one or two leaves a week so that by harvest they are fully defoliated without much shock...on the other hand some people just come in at say week 3 and do it all in one sitting...which, good or bad, would surely effect a plant differently...and the thread starter advocates trimming every single leaf off starting in veg and going all through flower...also how dense your garden is would have a big effect, your watts per foot...so many variables...i mean as we all know, some strains respond better to fimming and lst than others do, just so many variables...and that doesn't even touch the fact that on top of the direct variables...most growers have other variables in their own experiments, making it pretty hard to scientifically pin this all down...for instance, im doing my best to account for variables but as fever noted, i did switch too mh at week 5 of budding, and at day 9 i switched from maxibloom to floramicro/bloom, although they both follow the lucas formula's npk and im using the same dosage...it is a variable...

people defoliating in different ways with strains that react differently to the procedure, in often very different grows...all expecting to get the same results...it's just not possible imo, and probably the reason this thing has remained unaccepted by the entire community for so long...on the other hand i could find that all the sudden without defoliating i am actually going from 40 five gram plants to 40 six or seven gram plants...im pretty confident in my ability to estimate my plants weights, and they seem to be about the same as with defoliated...but like i said my mind is open and the buds do have a different shape to them from not defoliating...i wont know for absolutely sure until November 10...when my buds are fully dry and in jars...then i can weigh them and be certain in my mind whether defoliation hurts yields per plant, or doesn't...it's quite obvious it doesn't INCREASE the yield per plant, just maybe, the yield per grow, if you can truly fit more plants in a space and get quality plump buds all the way to the bottom with defoliating...but only if packing said plants at the tightest density would result in large amounts of undeveloped buds had all the leaves been left on.

i must say that in the process of typing this last response,(i know, i write to much and it's a chore to read) i have reconciled with myself over why the community has had such a hard time accepting this technique, and possibly others...there are just so many variables...if it were legal and it was an agricultural university doing the testing they would likely have no extra variables, control groups, and less personal attachment to the results, so it would be infinitely easier to come out with concrete, unbiased results...even our side by side experiments are at best a laughable joke compared to the unbridled scientific method of agricultural corporations and colleges...it's no wonder we can't come to a consensus with all the...damn variables...

 

[Bud buster]

If you go back to page 250 it would seem that defoliation does increase yield by a lot in the previous grow log but it helps big time if you do it in veg to create that dense branching, in my plants it has made a very thin large spaced plant into a dense bush and mine is a mix but sativa leaning that should branch better than an Indica but i think the indicas need more branching unless your doing a sog but even then dense branching fills the spaces in giving more available bud. Some strains do respond better and tops versus popcorn is a big issue if you got bigger tops but 1/3 the plant is popcorn or trim that away then you waste a few weeks growth. Your better off budding earlie than striping all the branches {lolipoping} out that took weeks to grow.

Most of the flamers are people that have never tried this method and are just arguing on theory you are one that has done it and are actually figuring it out As far as HPS VS MH I'd lean to MH I have a 1000 watt that I'll hook up soon for flower but the debate still rages in this thread 15 pages and counting https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=243060

 

[señorsloth]

If you go back to page 250 it would seem that defoliation does increase yield by a lot in the previous grow log but it helps big time if you do it in veg to create that dense branching, in my plants it has made a very thin large spaced plant into a dense bush and mine is a mix but sativa leaning that should branch better than an Indica but i think the indicas need more branching unless your doing a sog but even then dense branching fills the spaces in giving more available bud. Some strains do respond better and tops versus popcorn is a big issue if you got bigger tops but 1/3 the plant is popcorn or trim that away then you waste a few weeks growth. Your better off budding earlie than striping all the branches {lolipoping} out that took weeks to grow.

a good point! sorta follows my line of thinking that one of the reasons the debate can't be ended and the answers known is there is a big difference in the way people apply defoliation to their plants...the way you described seems reminiscent of supper cropping, and involves a longer veg to prep the plants for higher yeild once budding...i don't veg at all, my clones go right from rooting to 12/12, so that style of defoliation doesn't work in my situation...maybe thats the heart of it...maybe all of us in this thread not following the original posters exact guidelines are mucking up the testing...and if we all followed his method to the letter the benefits of defoliation would be much less disputable...hard to say i guess cause i don't veg, i can't test his method...although what you described is somewhat similar to what i do, if i pretend that my 40 clones sharing a bed 3-4 inches apart are really one big plant...i get denser growth by planting all my clones right next to each other and then defoliating, as apposed to the thread originator, defoliating to get more branches and denser growth...in the end the look is the same right? tightly spaced branches and buds that produce denser budding zones and more overall yield? for instance in my grow, i say it doesn't increase yeild per plant but it does increase over the whole grow cause you fit more plants in...now pretend those plants are all branches of one bush defoliated from birth to be as dense as my sog...just like my sog, the yeild per branch wouldn't change as much as the yeild per the total bush, it just so happens that the defoliated from veg bush has more branches in the same space as one that hasn't been...i dunno it's a lot of speculation...and given all the variables i think im going to have to work harder to be unbiased about this...harvest is coming soon and i'll know if i'm better off just letting my sog grow like a cooter from the 70's or if a little trimming is in order...of course i still wont have tested the thread originators method at all so maybe my findings are meaningless to anybody but me...

as for the side by side of mh to hps you linked...thats actually the thread that started me questioning the old "hps for bloom, mh for veg" line...i went off site to half a dozen other forums, and also googled the crap out of it...from what i saw...if you discount every single person who has never tried it and is just speculating or reasoning...it comes off overwhelmingly positive, of course, today, more than ever these site are filling with little punk teenage posers...who act like it's a fun game to pretend to be a serious grower, they read very little from good sources...their attention spans limit them to reading no more than a tweet at a time...then they confidently spout pure crap all over the boards...the posers are the ones glomming on to every stoner myth in the book, and repeating them to noobs...who by definition, are infinitely more relevant than posers because they are actually trying to become a grower and help the community, not just pretending while they grow a swag seed in a cardboard box lined with tin foil and a cfl... of course their inexperience can make them easy prey for posers with bad knowledge...some of them have been on these sites so long, collecting posts and reputation points like it's a game, it can be hard to find out who...except they generally don't have a grow log...

when i look at that thread and the countless others on the subject it seems super obvious to me that the people discounting it have never tried metal halide, and are doing it based on flawed logic, not a bad experience...that or posers as i said repeating the tried and true lines so that people will assume they are legit...there are actually more people out there blooming in metal halide than we think i would guess, they just don't seem to be super vocal about it...though, to be honest, the more experienced growers don't participate as much in that role as they used to on overgrow...if you go in the general growing forums, it's mostly people with lower post counts answering all the questions(and asking them), and sadly, a lot of the info isn't right either...but regardless, i defy somebody to find a legit, experienced grower with a good reputation who has switched to metal halide and saw a loss in yield or quality...they all say yield was unaffected or raised as was smell and trich coverage...the negative comments seem to be almost completely speculation and hearsay...

 

[Bud buster]

Sounds like we In the same mindset trying it versus theorizing. I do believe it would help anybody to strip a week before chop like the previous poster to let light fatten and harden the bottom popcorn.

 

[señorsloth]

well, in theory the last week the plant is going through senescence,and is essentially dying...it's not sucking up nutrients anymore nor photosynthesizing, so taking the leaves of the last week doesn't seem to hurt anything, but then again, if the plant isn't taking in light or nutrients, for all we know taking the leaves off the last week could do nothing at all...

logic tells me it would help a bit, because i have noticed the buds directly under my bulb ripen a bit faster than the ones farther away, and people who under light their gardens often get even slower maturation... so reason would say that while having extra light down there might not effect the photosynthesis of those buds, but might help to ripen trichs more and hormonally trigger them to tighten up more...i wouldn't know though because ive never really cared all that much...it's probably pretty nominal...

wow, i have been writing way too much, i'm in the middle of a 3 week tolerance break and my energy levels are just off the charts...so im gonna get off this thread till my results are in and tallied...rather than force more people to read my carrying on's....

 

[Bassy59]

I have learned one thing from personal experience and Bubba Kush does not yield better with the defoliation technique. I should have documented it but there does not seem to be enough hours in the day lately. I had two Bubba's from clone and I know the strain well. I had one with defoliation and the other without - and the other without produced almost a third more with them being exactly the same age and size. So I know, at least for Bubba it doesn't do well, not saying other strains won't react differently. Just my observation. Next I'll try it on my Lime Skunk since it is a 50/50 idica/sativa.

TGT

Plz read my post, #3739 just one page back from above quote. It refers to post #153 (I think) in this thread on running side by side. Then tell us if your side by side was a proper test on defoliation. Note the bolded in my post on said page.

 

[eurasian_farmer]

I'm definitely getting on board with some X-treme defoliation!!

 

[vspin]

(newbie)

Now I don't have plans at the moment to attempt this defoliation technique until I've built up more knowledge and experience, but this technique is very intriguing to me, and not because of the title of the thread, but because of the number of people using the technique that are very pleased with the results.

I agree that if you want to find out if it works, you're going to have to try it for yourself, however, I'm curious as to why a side-by-side experiment cannot be done properly..? I read that because this technique requires more time in veg it wouldn't make sense to compare the results of another plant harvesting sooner. If this is the reason, why not have two identical compact rooms, and top, LST, supercrop, etc. in both rooms, and in the one room follow this defoliation technique as well, then calculate and compare the yield per day (or week, month, etc.) after drying/curing for both grows?

 

[Bassy59]

(newbie)

Now I don't have plans at the moment to attempt this defoliation technique until I've built up more knowledge and experience, but this technique is very intriguing to me, and not because of the title of the thread, but because of the number of people using the technique that are very pleased with the results.

I agree that if you want to find out if it works, you're going to have to try it for yourself, however, I'm curious as to why a side-by-side experiment cannot be done properly..? I read that because this technique requires more time in veg it wouldn't make sense to compare the results of another plant harvesting sooner. If this is the reason, why not have two identical compact rooms, and top, LST, supercrop, etc. in both rooms, and in the one room follow this defoliation technique as well, then calculate and compare the yield per day (or week, month, etc.) after drying/curing for both grows?

That's fine vspin. You're talking about TWO rooms, not a real side by side. The op does explain why side by side isnt feasible in the context 90% of everyone wants to suggest it or do it.

 

[vspin]

That's fine vspin. You're talking about TWO rooms, not a real side by side. The op does explain why side by side isnt feasible in the context 90% of everyone wants to suggest it or do it.

Ah, I see.

 

[Mr Blah]

As you tell by my start date I've been on here for a while, just reading and gather info.
I have started the defoliation in a 10'Lx7'Wx10'tall room
1-400HPS overhead
1-600HPS Overhead
2-1000HPS Vertical passive cooling
1-12000Btu ac
2 Dehumidifiers
3 fans
system;
combination/hybrid of RDWC and MPB

First few weeks vegging and Defoliating;
Before

After

 

[Mr Blah]

few more weeks in veg;
Before

After

week 2 flower
before

After

roots

Hopping for 4+#'s. I usually get around 3. So we'll see if this technique is good for taller trees.

 

[Bud buster]

They look great you got some fat trees it a good test you can compare runs in a dialed setup. Have you noticed them being denser than before? That is what i find it just makes them branch so much.